Finally finished! I've chipped away at this piece for almost 3 months, the longest time span and most hours I've ever put into a painting at this point. Next big piece I'll just have to ramp up the scale even more

Nayora slumps to the ground, taking off her battered armor. Much of the suit is over heating from being pushed to and beyond it's limits, burning her skin in places, compounding on the injuries inflicted by her foes. She's survived this time but knows fighting like this, she wont live forever.

Several ships arrived in system carrying a small but specialized force of counter shield equipped bio-neural mechs and infantry.The ships also mounted massive offensive shield arrays that can cook anything on the planet surface. What they didn't expect was an Elemental being able to jump into low orbit, putting an end to the naval bombardment, leaving the ground forces stranded and without critical fire support.

I'm going to preface this with a few bullet points. A) I am a 2D Animator by trade. B) I've just begun to get into digital painting as a serious side skill. C) I'm not yet at this skill level, but may be able to contribute some food for thought coming from a different area.

First off, the composition is sensible. Our focus is slightly off center and well framed by the downed ship behind her. Even the dead guy on the ground is facing the focal point so everything in this piece is unified in leading our eyes towards what you want us to look at most.

I would say the weakest thing here is her pose. Both her legs are so similar that they might as well be a flipped duplicate of each other. The silhouette and pose would be better with less symmetry there, perhaps the left leg (audience left) further out in profile. Secondly, her left arm could use some refining. Were her silhouette blacked out and all BG elements removed, I would think someone is pulling that arm. The rest of her body reads as exhausted, but that arm is doing something else entirely. Resting her elbow on her left quad would really add to that post carnage exhaustion I think, like she can barely hold her body up anymore.

This is a small thing. To her right reads well as a helm, but I'm not sure what the object to her left is. It also creates a bit of tension being so close to her body but not quite touching. Almost a tangent I guess.

Last little thing. She is decked out in body armor, but her shoulders are exposed. What you have is more practical than 99% of artist's drawing women in armor, and I love that. Why not go that last step, and give her some shoulder pads, or even turn her skin tone to metal to match the rest of the suit? Otherwise, her weakness is too obvious to her enemies.

Everything else reads well. I like the negative space around the hand aimed at the ground, love the colors and expression in her face, and that little blue wave on the ground around her. I'm enjoying your work, and am very inspired by it. Thanks for sharing!

This is very good, there are lots of things I like about it. I especially like the rendering on her thigh armor, and from a realism perspective, I like its bulkiness; it makes it seem much more substantial than skin-hugging 'sexy armor'.

What stands out as potential areas for improvement is the sense of depth. I think the thing behind her is massive, like a dropship, but there's something about it that makes it look flat. Perhaps, given the way the foreground is lit with local point lights, it would be nice to see some localized lighting on the dropship (from ground fires or something) to give it a sense of scale.

The fallen solder behind her merges into the dropship; his raised weapon arm has nearly the same contrast level as the very distant ship, and isn't picking up any light from the electrical crackle on his chest. Surely he'd have a bit of edge lighting too, as she does?

I really like the narrative that you were going for, but it doesn't come through in the piece for me. Her facial expression reads as fatigue for me, unfocused. Given what you've written I might expect her face to read determination, focus on the task of removing her armor, frustration, pain, alertness - but it reads as unfocused to me, like she's a bit stunned, or perhaps really tired from the descent. It looks more like her armor is simply falling off, rather than her tearing it off as a desperate readying for the next bit of action.

The color of her face and shoulders is /really/ warm given that every light in the picture is cool (the green glow of the sky, the indigo crackle of her shield or whatever it is on the ground).

Holy crap, I can't believe I missed this - that is awesome, not only the drawing, but also just the fact that she jumped into low orbit to kill a ship.

The drawing is, of course, awesome as well. I love the detail in her burn marks, the armor, the sparks and wreckage flying around, it's so detailed and gorgeous. Comparing it to your older work, you have improved so much, especially in the detail of the armor, anatomy, and line work.

3 months well spent. So much story crammed in here. I would love to see you get a series or a manga or a movie to bring these scenes to reality. Great work here. Great colors, expression, detail, everything!!

im proud of you when i see this man, mostly because we have seen eachother evolve so much. it's really great to see what you can do now when you give something everything. ah, only one tiny thing sticks out to me, not sure if its intended or if anybody else pointed it out but neither of your official crits did.. anyway, the only thing that strikes me on any of it is how wide the bridge of her nose is closest to her eyes

Ah yep, I always have a tendency to mess up my noses in some way, I need to pay more attention there.It is pretty cool to watch artists develop. Same goes for you, seeing you go from hobby artist on PK all the way to full process cover artist shows your success.

This. is now my wallpaper. on another note, I have a character who resembles her to around 70 percent (the 30 percent is attitude and story line which is heading in the this direction) whom I conceived around a year ago.. although shes the main character and not secondary.